Hi! Thank you so much. If you don’t mind, do you have any recommendations for someone setting up Bootstrap as a total beginner with no dev/design experience? I looked at a couple webpages about how to add Bootstrap to a WordPress theme, but most of the methods look like they’re way above my technical skill level. And I can’t find any Bootstrap-using WordPress themes that are available without a business plan (it looks like there used to be a few but they’re not around anymore and/or got moved to business only.)

Would one of these plugins work for me, do you think? https://wordpress.com/plugins/block-editor-bootstrap-blocks/ https://wordpress.com/plugins/wp-bootstrap-blocks/

Divi seems nice, but it’s too expensive for what I’m looking for. I think my former employer was using that with their WordPress site, which I added blog posts to a couple times (this was several years ago). But it looks I’d need to upgrade to a WordPress business plan and THEN pay $89/year on top of that if I wanted to use WordPress + Divi myself.

honestly, looking up flex box makes me think that learning CSS might be less frustrating than dealing with this crappy WordPress interface… I think I could learn this https://www.w3schools.com/csS/css3_flexbox.asp

But I’d have to somehow host my site, though, right? I’ve never had to do that before, I just let WordPress handle that. I don’t think I’m ready to set up my own server… I have zero experience with anything like that and also only have one working computer right now. (My other, older laptop needs more expensive/extensive repair work than I thought.) Is there a hosting service you’d recommend? Or am I back to needing a “bloated CMS” that offers hosting?

What issue do people have with JavaScript? (Should I be against JavaScript?)

Mostly just that I registered my domain through there. (It’s one I bought in the past but allowed to lapse, and then I was pleasantly surprised to find it was still available so I bought it again… in retrospect, I probably should have waited to play around with current-day WordPress some more before buying through there.) But I can still move my site with its domain name off WordPress, right?

It will definitely have a blog. Probably some other projects eventually (TBD which ones, but I’ll at least want to display photos nicely). I also want to make the site colorful if possible, maybe a little offbeat-looking.

yeah, I would love this to be true but it looks like it’s probably disinformation.

hope someone actually manages to get rid of the bots someday!

I don’t like using the word “theft” because it implies this is primarily a property rights issue, and IMO it’s much more of a labor rights and moral rights issue. This ain’t gonna be solved by just enforcing existing copyright laws when employers, publishers, social media companies, etc. can effectively force creators to waive their rights as copyright holders. (Sign away your rights to AI training or you won’t get a record deal! Sign away your rights to AI training or you won’t get any work at all!) I tend to think we should focus on bringing back sectoral bargaining (like what the Hollywood writers and actors did) and/or creating new laws that recognize inalienable moral rights for creators.

But otherwise, yes. I very much agree.

bonus if you don’t wear the kind of pants that collect dog hair!

I would try it! Also, maybe the secret is to make it an orange mocha.

I kind of associate hot chocolate with kids and winter, so maybe that’s where the reaction came from? That said, I would and have quite happily drunk hot chocolate in public as an adult, regardless of season.

If you’re really worried that someone will look down on you and you don’t like coffee, maybe order a tea or a refresher. Chai lattes and matcha lattes also don’t have coffee. Or just get food and a water.

As for your title question, It has literally never occurred to me to think anything about someone not drinking coffee or expressing a dislike for coffee.

If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

…as an adult, you realize that much of the time, no one is going to come save you.

bonus: sometimes you put non-garbage in and it’s STILL garbage out! Because the thing you’re putting it into is itself garbage. Exhibit A: trying to do good work for a company with bad procedures.

Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for your help!

Thank you so much for explaining all of this!

Yeah, I think I will try out at least a couple distros on USBs or maybe a virtual machine. I think I still have at least one USB lying around somewhere in my closet… don’t remember if it has enough space, but maybe.

Based on those articles and your explanations, I’m certainly going to want to explore immutable and atomic at some point, although maybe not right away since it sounds like there’s more I’d need to learn. Both of those qualities sound fantastic to me. I think I’ll be fine with a little more storage use, and I highly doubt I’ll want to change anything about critical folders anytime soon. I’d like to avoid broken installations and myself accidentally doing really stupid things.

Yeah, I’ll look at the documentation available before I install any OS. Thank you!

Awesome, thanks! Do you think I’ll have to mess with the wifi card or drivers to get things like the wifi, audio, and/or webcam to work?

Thanks! What kinds of workflow differences? And do you think I’ll have to mess with the wifi card and drivers to get it to work? I’m seeing some people talking about that with other operating systems.

Yeah, I’m realizing that might be unavoidable. I’m still hoping I can get Linux Mint or Zorin working without messing around with that (one person said they didn’t have to do any of that when installing those on similar Macs, but others did - maybe this changed at some point when Mint/Zorin was updated?), but we’ll see. Not looking forward to figuring that out, but it might be worth it. Thanks!

Thanks! Did you have to do anything to get wifi, fans, or the webcam working on the 2015 Macbook Pros running Zorin or Mint? Some other people have mentioned having to work around that on various distros.

Oh, OK. Very different use case!

If you’re at the level of knowing all this stuff and also running your own server, and you’re finding PopOS Cosmic to be still in its beta days, then it’s probably not for someone like me. I don’t really know what dnf vs. apt means yet (still just trying to wrap my head around what a package manager does). A lot of people keep recommending Gnome, though, so I’ll probably still try that and maybe Fedora.

Thanks for looking into this and finding that Github documentation! All of this stuff still sounds complicated to me, but I’m probably going to have to do some learning and kitting up anyway. It turns out that this computer’s battery is toast because it sat in a closet for years, and my relative never recharged it in all that time. I might as well look into a new Wi-Fi card and maybe a new SSD as well, if I’m going to be fixing this thing up with new parts anyway. Might have to wait a bit longer than I thought to get started, though. I don’t know what anything else you mentioned in this post is, but I can learn. I’ll probably try to figure out the Facetime HD drivers eventually.